


Fortitude

by GraceEliz



Series: Buir Fox [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Buir Fox, Fox is about to murder the Chancellor and he has no regrets, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I cried writing this, I swear I didn't want this to happen to them, Implied/Referenced Rape/Noncon, Oh hell here we go, Riyo is buir now, Strong Language, Tears, discussion of very bad offscreen events, snuggling and cuddling, some onscreen violence, underage tag for the clones because theyre mentally underage and physically probably also underage, yep I'd definitely call this abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraceEliz/pseuds/GraceEliz
Summary: His life is not a life, not really. He wakes. He gets dressed. He buckles his emotions away as his armour tightens. He kisses his brother’s foreheads to wake them up if they’re in his bed, and gently opens their room doors if they aren’t so they’ll wake naturally to the sound of the radio blaring from the kitchen. Thorn is usually up too, not dressed, but tea and sandwiches are waiting. He’s a provider by nature, Thorn. He takes his dinner up to his cupboard-office, jigs the door open and hopes he remembers to fix it today; turns on his array of datapads because they have too few actual computers and one has to go to medical. The other is in barracks, where vode can use it as necessary. He listens to his voicemails as his emails and memos load up, by which point his tea is cool enough to drink. Tea drunk, he addresses the easy issues first, signing off requisition forms, sending a new request out to the cafés and restaurants and such for all Clone-induced bills to be addressed c/o The Guard, checking he has indeed sent out today’s rotations.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox & Original Clone Trooper Character(s), Fox & Kix, Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Series: Buir Fox [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857178
Comments: 21
Kudos: 116





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I never explicitly use the word "rape" because Fox doesn't. However, it's pretty evident that that - or at the very least heavily coerced very reluctant relations - occured offscreen to the emotional and physical detriment of more than one of the Clone OCs. The Underage tag applies to the idea that despite being biologically old enough to fight, drink, and so on, these Shinies are effectively children. Fox considers them children. I have written them as an equivalent to mid-late teens in their mindsets.

His life is not a life, not really. He wakes. He gets dressed. He buckles his emotions away as his armour tightens. He kisses his brother’s foreheads to wake them up if they’re in his bed, and gently opens their room doors if they aren’t so they’ll wake naturally to the sound of the radio blaring from the kitchen. Thorn is usually up too, not dressed, but tea and sandwiches are waiting. He’s a provider by nature, Thorn. He takes his dinner up to his cupboard-office, jigs the door open and hopes he remembers to fix it today; turns on his array of datapads because they have too few actual computers and one has to go to medical. The other is in barracks, where vode can use it as necessary. He listens to his voicemails as his emails and memos load up, by which point his tea is cool enough to drink. Tea drunk, he addresses the easy issues first, signing off requisition forms, sending a new request out to the cafés and restaurants and such for all Clone-induced bills to be addressed c/o The Guard, checking he has indeed sent out today’s rotations.  
By now, he has been awake for probably drawing near an hour, and his brothers are starting to spread through the Senate to do their jobs. The morning will pass far too quickly, and he will not have made enough of a dent in the workload, and he will eat his lunch mid-morning, but Click will come in to drag him down to barracks for a bite to eat and a drink. He’ll check in on the medics, wince in sympathy at the financial reports, and do his best not to get angry about being considered property – less than an animal. He knows that the older vode have ways and means of acquiring the necessary amounts of credits to keep. He does not think about it. Afternoon rounds will take his full, undivided attention.  
This is without the Senators sticking their noses; before he has to go out on call into the city; disregarding the ridiculous little summonses he has to answer.  
Riyo is the only comfort. Riyo, and the kits and vod’e, and Senator Amidala is very sweet to them all too. When he has a day off – the last of the month, usually, unless he’s swapped it out for whatever reason – he spends the entirety of it with Riyo, often in the gentle sanctuary of her home, free from pressure to perform and the expectation to see every useless request from every hapless Senator through. With Riyo, he feels like a free man.


	2. Two

When he found out about just what they were doing to keep a bit of secret extra money coming in, it was entirely on accident. Hound and he were playing with the four new Shinies sent out from Kamino, a game of tackle-tag just to burn a bit of energy with movement before lights out (literally, the electricity gets switched off at ten in an attempt to direct funds towards food, and any vod getting up in the night either goes by feel or by torchlight) or night shift in the case of Hound. They’d all been laughing, yelling when they got tackled down to the ground. It had been so run-of-the-mill, a simple action Fox didn’t do nearly often enough with his Shinies (his vode’ika, but sometimes he felt more like their buir) and not-so-Shinies. Teek had been his target, that round, so he darted into him, arm about his vod’ika’s waist and tugged him down onto his lap, pinning him down for tickles with a leg hooked around his vod’ika’s hip. But Teek froze, gasping in pain and fear at the pressure on his thigh and stomach, lurching away like a kicked kitling. Fox immediately let go, horrified with himself.

“Teek? Vod'ika, what brought this on? Come on, talk to me,” he coaxed near-desperately. Who had dared hurt one of his kits? Teek was only three or four standard years old, just a baby. He shouldn’t be pained like this. Much to his horror, Teek started to cry, slow tears burning down his cheeks as his whole body crumpled down into Fox’s waiting embrace. 

Hound stilled, watching warily but alertly with the other young ones at his side. Will-take-to-barracks, he signed grimly, before ushering the three remaining Shinies down to bed. The youngest, Billy, tried to reach back, short blond fuzz catching the artificial light as he pushed against Hound’s solid arm, but the other two tugged him on with quiet words. Behind them, the door clicked shut. 

Now alone in the training room, Teek’s fearful fragile gasps echoed in the empty space, the only sound. They echoed louder than gunshots. “Teek? Sweetheart? Can you tell me what’s wrong?” 

His ad shuddered. “I – it hurts, buir,” he keened.

Fox frowned, suddenly afraid of what he was about to find out. “What does? Can I see?” He loosened his grip, allowing the Shiny – so young it hurt his heart – his space to reach for the hem of his blacks. Little choked-off sounds escaped him as he tugged at the hems. What had happened on simple internal patrol to cause such harm? The blacks scrunched up to armpit height, revealing the expected expanse of dark skin with scar-light lines and speckles, but also… oh, also. “Are those fingerprints?” he demanded, utterly aghast. Oval marks, dark bruises scattered over his ad’s stomach – there, creeping above the waistline of his pants, tiny crescent-cuts. 

“He – I didn’t want to,” spat the child – a child, _he was only a child_. “I said no but he said, said, said he’d get the others, the pretty ones li’ Click an’ Billy an’ Thire, but I said Thire’d kill him if he tried and he said ‘well, if you come quiet, I’ll call my friends off’, an’ there were some more of them an’ Billy an’ Click were _scared,_ buir, so I – I,”

No. Force, no, not his ade – not those he is sworn to protect, gods, no. Teek whimpered, burrowing into the swell of Fox’s chest as the sobs restarted, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move except to choke on his horror. Not this. Please, Force, not this. His babies – he couldn’t even think the word, locked in a whirl of anguished silent scream.

“Fuck,” he choked out, curling around his ad’ika as if he could erase all the trauma with his love, protect his ad – his ad, oh gods – from everyone who would hurt him. “Fuck, ad’ika.”

“They said, they said that if I didn’t they were gonna get Click, and, and,” sobbed his boy, one of his kits, one of the young ones he has failed. His fingers dug into Fox’s ribs hard enough to make them creak, but it was nothing – a little strain meant nothing compared to the health of his ade. 

“No, no, you don’t have to tell me, hush, hush.”

Teek shook his head hard enough to whip his short curls into a tangled mess. “Click an’ Billy would’n’a survived it, Fox,” he insisted, anxiously, as if he thought Fox would be mad at him for it, “I had t’ do it, buir.”

He clutched Teek closer, cradling the knotted curls close to his heartbeat, willing himself not to throw up. How could he have missed this? How? “You won’t ever have to do it again, I promise,” he swore, voice little more than a grieved rasp, “I promise.”

“But, we need the credits, buir.”

“I’ll fix it, okay? I’ll fix it. This isn’t your problem to solve.” He would…. There had to be something that could be done to bring in emergency credits without resorting to that, surely. Of all people he knew best that Clones, especially the Shinies, had fewer rights than most of the criminal classes of the undercity. Nobody would have stepped in to protect a Clone Trooper, not even if said Trooper looked nowhere near old enough to be legal and was resisting. Not even then. For all intent and purpose, they’re alone. Unprotected. “Let’s get you to bed, hm?” crooned Fox, gathering Teek close to him. Teek pressed his forehead into his. Three levels, and he could carry him most of the way once they got down the stairs. “Up on your feet, ad’ika.”

“M’tired.”

Teek had been on light duty for three days, the only way Fox could give his men any semblance of vacation; this bone-deep swaying exhaustion meant…   
Well. Whatever it meant; he would fix it. 

Stitch was waiting for them in Fox’s room. All the vode had obviously been sent to bed or work, all the lights off, doors closed. It was highly unlikely they would stay in their beds all night once they decided Fox had had enough time to fix the situation.

He wondered, sickened, how many of them knew what was happening, and how many of his vode’ika would come talk to him about it. How many of them would come with similar – he hated to call it a confession because they’d done nothing wrong, they’d done nothing to deserve to be pushed down, but they would feel like they had. Most Clones struggled to truly own themselves, and to – to sell their bodies, his ade selling themselves and not telling him because they thought he’d be disappointed or mad at them - 

“Stitch is gonna take a look at you, is that okay?” 

“’Lek, buir.”

He met his vod’s eyes, knowing that Stitch would let him have his breakdown as soon as they did what could be done for Teek. “Okay. Can you show Stitch what you showed me, ad?”

“Mm, if’e wants,” agreed his ad sleepily, nestling into the soft blankets that made Fox’s bed the ‘den’, a bolthole for all the Clones serving under his supervision. “Hurts.”

Stitch met his eyes grimly. They knew victims, they’d helped victims; hells, a lot of them remained in touch and helped find people and information. These signs were so horribly familiar. “Alright, kiddo. Let’s get you checked over. Is Fox staying or going?”

“Staying,” stated Teek firmly, gripping on to Fox. He leant back on the wall, pillowing his ad on his chest where he could hear his heartbeat, and concentrated on staying calm. This procedure, however painful, was one they’d done a myriad times before when in the undercity. Fox gave off what the youth called “dad vibes” and a lot of the younger – prostitutes, that what they were, he could say the word, but trying to relate it his ad, his own ade, his babies, made him dizzy. Thankfully Stitch was gentle, trusted, warm and safe; Teek started to nod off. The check took as long as it ever did when the children of the undercity came to them secretively, when things were so bad the Guard seemed like the safest option. 

Stitch’s jaw wound tighter and tighter.

“Okay, kiddo. All done, yeah? You can go to sleep now, I’ll let you know in the morning if I need to do follow ups, yeah?”

“’lek, Stitch,” agreed the boy, and snuggled deeper into the bed. Careful not to wake him up out of his doze, Fox slid to his feet, tucking a blanket over his feet. Teek liked his feet covered. His twin Eli hated having his feet covered. On silent feet, Fox followed the medic into the hall.

“Fuck, vod,” he said, sinking to the floor. “Fuck. He – he’s gonna need antibiotics.”

Oh. _Oh._ “Whoever did this to him, I’ll kill him.”

The squad medic didn’t even look up from the floor. “I know, but you’ll not get a name. Heart of solid bedrock that boy.”

“He’s a kid,” whispered Fox, begging he didn’t know what for. “Ad’iik shouldn’t – they shouldn’t.”

Another sigh. “I know, ori’vod, but it happened.”

Silence.

“Stitch, the others, they haven’t?”

“No. Force, no. I would come to you if they did,” he promised, finally meeting Fox’s bleary eyes, “I know that you love those boys as if they were your own ade. I swear, I would have come to you straight away if I knew.”

But he hadn’t known. He hadn’t, and it had happened, and the fear that it had happened before, to others of the vode, clutched at his throat like vines, rippled in his knees like an earthquake. What if they’d been hiding it? What if, in the two years since the Guard were established, this sort of thing had happened before; what if this was not an isolated incident?

“Fox, breathe. Breathe with me, vod,” Thorn directed. When had Thorn arrived? What if the boys were up – they shouldn’t see this, they needed to go to bed, to sleep. Stand up, he had to stand up. “Vod, breathe. You’re in the hall of the barracks,” said Thorn, telling him little things to ground him. The date. The names of their vode. His rank, his number, that he had a date with Riyo yesterday. This grounding recitation of who he is shouldn’t be needed, this disassociation should not happen, ever. But it does. He hides it well, he knows, so well that most of the vode don’t realise just how often he loses snips of time. After all, he’s Fox. Untouchable. Kind. Steadfast. Buir Fox. 

He can’t have a breakdown in the hall. He can’t let the Shinies see him in such a mess, not when they depend on him so much. Ruthless control. Breathe to the beat of your heart, your war-drum, he remembers the tutors instructing coldly. Regain your sense of your surroundings and exert your will over them. “Thorn. Bathroom.”

Thorn knew that alarmed croak, bundling him with admirable speed back into his room and thence to the ‘fresher, keeping a kind hand on his shoulder as he hurled up little more than watery acid into the bowl. His ade – his ade. “I’ve failed,” he groaned, “I’ve failed to protect them.”

“You did your best.”

“How did I not notice? How could I have not noticed this?”

They both know there is no answer to give that won’t make Fox feel worse.


	3. Three

“Hey, clone! Yeah, you, Senate clone,” yells an aggressive man’s voice across the floor of the club.

“Don’t turn around, Billy,” he instructs, clenching his drink tighter. “Ignore it, vode.”

“Fox,” starts Kix in concern. 

Fox sends a sharply quelling look to his brothers from the 501st. “Not a word. Ignore them.” He intends to do just that, finish his drink and then take Billy home before maybe going to Riyo’s for a few hours, probably just to sleep before back on the beat. The medic shifts uncomfortably opposite him, glancing at Rex. 

“Hey, clones. Look at your betters when they’re talking to you,” sneers the drunkard.

Inhale. Exhale. Don’t look at the tension and fear in Billy’s frame beside him, don’t think about why it is that his ad is so nervous. “You are not my better.”

“Oh? The law says differently.”

He sighs again. “Look,” he says, careful not to move too quickly, “let us be.”

A large, pale hand reaches for Billy. His ad flinches backwards into the wall with a gasp, which the man sneers triumphantly at, snatching at him, but his hand doesn’t land because Fox is on his feet, now, an impermeable barrier.

“Let us be,” orders the Commander of the Coruscant Guard.

The man peers down his nose at him, at his vode and his ad, lip curled in disgust and a nauseating degree of animalistic lust. Bloodlust, flesh-lust, the craving to see the untouchable soldiers of the Republic fall to their knees. “Yeah?”

“If you touch him again,” he says as politely as he can, that fuck-you-kindly-sir smile on his face, “I will arrest for sexual assault of a minor, damage of Republic Property, and disturbance of the peace.”

The man – joined now by his cronies – spits at him. “Oh yeah?”

“I am the Commander of the Coruscant Guard,” Fox says quietly, knowing that Rex has been recognised, and the medic-symbols tattooed across Kix have caught attention. People are watching them from across the bar, waiting for someone to throw the first punch. It won’t be him. It can’t be him for legal reasons, even though his blood sings to fight, his training begs to be allowed to rip and tear. “Let’s go.” He holds his hand out to Billy, knowing that his ad will recognise the command to get up and move. Kix and Rex follow them out, hands on their blasters. This was meant to be a quick pint in the bar with their brothers, a last k’oyacyi before the 501st headed out with the 212th to battle once more, but he can’t even have this. What is the point of it all, if they’re protecting people who barely consider them alive?

“Fox.”

“Leave it, Rex.”

Billy presses a little closer into his side. The girls are watching them from the shadowed alleys letting onto the boulevard. Something is about to happen: he feels it in the pit of his stomach.

“Hey! Commander! Lost one of your boys?”

Can his night get worse? 

“Lio, such a cute name.”

Fox whirls on his heel. Tonight has just gone from bad to catastrophic because that’s his lost ad, he was killed in an explosion, they’d torn through the rubble for days searching for him, for a body to consign to ashes. “Lio,” he gasps, wounded in this very heart because his boy is bruised, limping, split lips and black eyes and those awful crescents dug all over his bared chest.

The monster holding him tight against his body curls his lip. “They’re so obedient when proper incentive is provided. Aren’t you, clone?”

Lio sobs, desperately watching Fox, and he is frozen where he stands – how did this happen? How did this monster get his ad?

“Please, let him go. Give him back to me.”

The monster snarls. “Beg.”

“Fox,” hisses Rex, but he goes ignored because these are his ade, his children, and Fox would murder the Chancellor himself with his bare hands for them, and kneeling to beg for their lives is nothing to what he would do. Nothing.

The grit of the city street digs into his skinned knee, not yet recovered from yesterday’s chase. From the corners of his eyes he can see the daughters and sons of the undercity step into the light, so young all of them barely covered by anything that could be clothes. This is for them. For them. For them.

“Please, give me my son,” he begs, “please.” Fury scalds his stomach, terror knots his throat, grief-guilt coils shaking down his arms. His entire body is shaking minutely, noticed not by the scum, but as obvious as an explosion to his vode, his ade. “Please.”  
The monster bares all his teeth. “Sure,” he says, as if they’re friends, as if Fox had asked to borrow a handful of credits or offered to buy him a drink, as if he hasn’t torture and abused Lio and countless other children. In his hand a blade flashes; someone screams, the undercity-children scatter like so many pebbles, but he only has eyes for Lio. Sweet Lio, who wanted to be a pilot, who like Billy is slightly smaller than most Clones but not noticeably so like Teek. Lio who is bleeding out.  
“Lio! Lio, ad’ika, talk to me, come on sweetie,” he begs, barely noticing the brothers from the 501st sprinting after the monster and his cronies, baring his teeth at Kix.

“Let me help,” he says. Fox nods, holding Lio as tightly as he can to himself, as if by his grip on the physical body he can stop his ad’s spirit from passing into the Force. Blood slicks his hands, slicks the emergency medkit Kix has pulled from gods-know-where. Billy is dropped beside them, one hand knotted in Fox’s shirt and the other pressed to the slash in Lio’s belly. “Billy, I need you to call Stitch and have him send a transport and be ready in the medbay, okay?”

“On it.”

“Lio? I’m gonna give you a hypo for the pain but you can’t go to sleep, okay?”

Lio gasps in horrible agony, clutching his buir’s leg tight in one hand. Ever speedy, Kix stabs the hypo in right as he pours some antiseptic over the wound, holding a hand on the pressure point of the young man’s shoulder to keep him pinned against Fox despite the desperate gritty scream. His eyes do not blink, his hands do not falter; despite the situation Fox finds himself almost relaxing because the vode are here, and they will help – they only have each other..

“ETA on Stitch?”

“Thire is two minutes off.”

Thank Force. Time blurs once more, but he isn’t panicking over that. All his panic is spent on the blood oozing out of his ad, the ragged edges of the wound barely soothed by carefully applied bacta. If the blade caught his lungs, or god forbid his heart –  
Where will they find the money for more bacta? Which of them will bite the metaphorical bullet and do something that will make Fox sick to think of?

Once in the transport, Thire muttering his familiar litany of foul language, trying to keep the young man awake is far harder than it should be. Every few moments Lio’s eyes glaze over, and Fox has to tap at his cheek to regain his attention. He needs help. He needs Riyo. Before he lets himself think too hard over it, he taps her holo-number into his wrist-comm. Within seconds she answers, sleepily soft. Guilt twinges in his diaphragm; he woke her up. 

“Ree.”

The holo-woman smiles. “Hey, Fox. What’s up?”

Hearing her voice, the boy stirs in his buir’s grip. “m’ere, buir.”

Buir, Rex mouths at Fox, eyebrows practically meeting his hairline. Shut up, he answers without looking over at the blond, trying to convey to Riyo that she should just roll with this admittedly worrying call. As far as either of them knew, Lio died in an explosion. 

“Heya ad. You gonna stay awake for me, so we can talk for a bit?” she asks quickly. Thank god for her fast brain, thinks Fox, melting a bit inside at the sheer care she always shows to the Clones. 

“I’m okay, buir, you don’ need to worry,” Lio tries to say, comforting her – comforting her, as if she’d rung after a bad dream, or was just catching up, and not like she was trying to help them keep Lio awake long enough to reach the home of the barracks where the horrible gash would be healed. “Fox raised us strong.”

She laughs, a broken desperate sound that is half a sob. What must be running through her mind? “I know, ad’ika. Have you missed me?”

“Mhm, missed you second most.”

“That’s good,” Riyo says, not wiping the tears away. They all know Lio is far too out of it to notice such a tiny holo-detail. “I missed you too, so much. You have a present waiting for you. I got you all a gift, for your birthdays.”

“Decan’tn day,” the woozy Clone corrects her, his head tipping. Fox shifts his arm a little to catch his boy’s temple on his palm. “No b’rthday. M’not natborn.”

“No, no,” she soothes him, “of course. I’m sorry. For your decanting day, then.” 

They’re almost there. Just another couple minutes before Stitch and Kix can work to save his life; just a few more minutes. Riyo meets his eyes over the comm, babbling away about something-of-nothing with Lio. Force, how he loves her. 

“Say,” she croons, “what do you think we should get your buir for his life day?”

Rex has the sort of “what the frack” expression that usually appears on Fox’s face in the morning. Kix doesn’t visibly respond to anything except the low beeps of his medical instruments, but he is listening. Medics are always listening. He hums, letting the reverberations rumble through his chest. “I don’t need anything.”

Billy’s eyes spark with sudden mischief. “Should give him you, Ree-buir.”

“Mm, wrapped in red,” agrees Lio. Even over the holo, Riyo’s blush is obvious in the darkening tone of her face. 

“Boys! Behave, please,” she flusters. Kix, knelt on the floor with his hand still pressed to the wound, sniggers, signing something lewd with one hand. Rex glares down at him, but he suspects – knows – his face is too soft to be intimidating. 

Thorn makes a loud, sharp noise in his throat, and the speeder slows and drops near-vertically. “Landing now, be ready for evac.” On the landing pad, the lights reflected of white-and-red armour and the metal struts of the stretcher. Good, he thinks firmly.

“I’ll be there in ten,” promises Riyo, and she is gone. Lio makes a small wounded noise, reaching for where her image had been. His hand grasps uselessly at the air.   
“Buir –”

“She’s on her way, ad’ika. Ner’ad,” he soothes as best he can. The doors open; Kix and Stitch are immediately moving, strapping the boy down – that bad? Bad enough for them to do emergency surgery on the stretcher?

Billy runs with them, Teek and Eli falling into step behind him, and the doors slam shut, and the cacophony of ER fades. He falls to his knees, stunned. Shock.

“Buir Fox?”

A street-boy. “Yes?”

He steps into the light, twisting his hands together. “I climbed up,” he says, voice high and young, “the whispers said that – his name is here.” The child holds out a wadge of flimsy. “We got everything we could for you.”

“It’s been ten minutes,” says Rex. He’d forgotten about Rex.

“And it was Buir Fox and the vod who got hurt,” states the boy grimly. His grimy white hair is shocking against his black skin. He has no visible eyes. He is, Fox will admit, a bit scary, but being scary has kept Nero’oi alive this long. “They said it was Lio. They said he made you beg.”

Fox says nothing. There’s nothing to be said. He is still on his knees. Nero’oi approaches him slowly, eyeing Rex warily. “You look after us, so we did this. We’ll kill him for you.”

“Nero’oi,” he starts, not sure what he’s going to say.

“No, Buir. Let us do this.”

Invisible-black against black eyes bore into his.  
“Alright.”

A twitch, the hint of needle-like yellowed teeth. “Good.” The child steps into the dark, and is gone.

Rex speaks. “What species is he?”

“Sometimes you’re better off not knowing,” says Thire quietly. “Get up, Fox’ika. Go in, and I’ll bring Ree when she arrives.”

“Vor’e, vod.”

“Fox – hold him down! We can’t give him a sedative or he might not wake up,” Stitch orders without looking away from the scanner screen. Both he and Kix’s hands are slicked in red blood and nasty looking yellow-white pus.

“Where do you want me?”

“Shoulder level.”

The three other batchers – Eli, Teek, Billy – are clustered around the bed: they can’t stay. Teek looks like he’s about to pass out. He makes a split second decision, knowing he’ll be obeyed, but he hopes they don’t resent. “Eli, take Teek away. Go now, ade, do not argue with me.”

There passes a long moment. “’lek, Buir.”

Two down. Lio thrashes against whatever Kix is doing with a suppressed howl, but Fox is holding him down. “Billy, go wait for Ree-buir, and when she comes bring her here.”

“But – ”

“Billy!”

“’lek, Buir,” and he goes. Fox breathes out.

“Alright, kid, I’m sorry, but this is gonna hurt like a fucking rancor,” Stitch says with his easy bracing tone. “Hold on to Fox now, kay?”

“Hurts.”

“I know, kiddo,” apologises their medic, “count to twenty in Mando’a.”

The boy does, stumbling over the numbers in ragged gasps. He’s reached ten by time they hear Riyo in the corridor.

“I do not care, Aide Ralchet! Leave this instant before I have my ade escorts you out.” Like an angel, she blows into the room. “Lio, darling.”

“Buir!”

She slides around Fox – they really should have a larger operating theatre – to stand at Lio’s head, resting her forearms very carefully over his shoulders. Her hand brushes Fox’s arm. “Hi, ad. I missed you,” she says gently, tucking her head down. Fox once headbutted her in the chin when she held him during a nightmare; she’d been fine, but now she keeps her head tucked in out of the way of accidental flailing. “What you gonna do when you’re out of here, sweetie?”

Choking another scream, the young man on the stretcher meets her eyes for only a second before his gaze slides away, roaming unseeingly about. “Tell Thorn ‘n Thire ‘n Hound they’re best.”

“Yeah?”

“Not – not as best as you,” he adds, clinging tight to Fox.

“Thought I was the best?”

Lio shakes his head as much as he can pinned to the bed as he is. “Nuh-uh, best is Ree-buir.”

There is a very rapid flurry of activity down the stretcher. Whispers between the two medics aren’t quite audible, but they don’t sound good. Lio sobs. “Hurts so much, Buir.”

He strokes down his ad’s bicep, his other hand tight under his upper back. “I know, Lio, but it’ll be better soon.”

Kix stands, peeling his gloves off. “You can’t get up, but I’ll give you a shot of bacta and some painkillers, and hopefully tomorrow you can go in a bacta tank. Your lungs are fine, but they’ll ache. Stitch will keep you good.” His eyes go a little distant. “I’ll see what I can scrape for you.”

Fox knows what he means. Riyo does too, he knows; she digs her nails into his forearm. “You don’t have to, vod.”

“We’re going to. Wolffe and Cody have free time in five days, so I’m going to send them around. You’re not alone, Fox.”

That doesn’t change the fact he feels alone. There is no Jedi here for them; no higher power who wants to help them, except Riyo.

Billy comes bursting in. “Lio!”

“Billy,” says the sleepy Clone. Kix beckons Fox out into the hall, Riyo close behind. They hear Stitch talking quietly to the boys.

Heaving a sigh, Kix slumps against the wall. “Right,” he says, scrubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Tell me how you want me to say this.”

Riyo slides her hand into his, clinging tight. She has a beautiful poker face, but she’s quivering, her hand shaking in his. “Give it us straight, please.”

He sighs heavily again. “Stitch said to me a very brief summary of what happened to Teek. I – it sickens me to have to tell you this, vod, but I think whatever has been done to Lio is worse. Physically, he’ll be fine, but mentally… I know your boys are young. I know they get sent to you younger than even to us. But. His mental state,” he trails off. Yeah, he thinks, that’s about what he expected.

Riyo hugs him. “I’ll get you the money for bacta.”

“Ree,” he tries weakly, but it’s useless. They both know it.

“Fox, let me.”

Kix is watching them closely. “Vod, you don’t have to give me in words, but you struggle for credits here, don’t you?”

“Yes. We – we find the money. It always comes.”  
There’s a long silence. One brother doesn’t want to admit how far they’re willing to jump to get what is needed; the other doesn’t truly want to know.  
“In the undercity there is an understanding. Boys in red are desperate, they say, and they’re right. They know how to push and what they can take and what the boys will let them take. And in return…”

“Gods. Oh my gods, Fox,” says Kix, warm skin washed out. “Okay. No. We’re not having this. From now on the boys pay their own leave.”

“Kix,” he says. Riyo clenches his hand, silencing his protests before they begin.

“Fox. Let us help you. You’re not alone.”

From the surgery, he can hear Lio gasping, and Billy and Stitch making a good effort to cheer him up. He knows his brothers-and-sons on night shift will be worrying; Teek and Eli must be a total mess. Jule, their other medic, based on the opposite side of the city quarter, will likely be prepping to start his shift early and let Stitch get some sleep. The other vod’e, if they’re awake, are probably worrying too. 

The Coruscant Guard are trying their best to help people. In their divisions – all of which are technically his divisions but he has excellent men to delegate to - they never hurt if they can talk, never harm if they can get away with a rapid stun. But still. Still they’re considered less-than-nothing. He could arrest those responsible for Lio’s pain, and he’ll have to let them go, because Lio doesn’t count as a sentient. Accusations of assault against a minor don’t stick when said minor is considered an adult on a technicality nobody ever thinks too hard about or it would crumble, when the form Fox fills out isn’t a casualty report but a damage claim, when the only people who would process it genuinely would have the reports scrapped at the next person.

“Alright,” he whispers.

He spends the night in an uncomfortable chair next to Lio’s bed, Billy curled on the floor at his feet. Teek had had to be removed again by Eli when he’d had a panic attack at the sight of the scars and bruises on his brother’s skin. Nobody else had tried to stay longer than to tell Lio he’d been missed.

“You need to sleep, love.”

“Mm,” he grunts at her, tugging her into his lap, “I can’t sleep.”

She strokes his hair, leaning into him, letting them both have a moment just to breathe. “What do we do now?”  
“Keep moving like always. Nero'oi gave us some Intel I’ll have to take a couple squads to investigate. Write up the reports. They never go anywhere but – they’re children, Ree. They’re just kids,” he says helplessly, burning inside with the tears. He tucks his face into her softness. “Why would anyone do this?”

“They’re evil, love. It isn’t your fault.”

A shuddering breath. His eyes are fixed on the soft panting movements of Lio’s chest, covered in a thin sheet, as if by looking away he damns his ad to the dark, to start marching on. “I should never have stopped looking.”

Riyo presses her lips to his. “No,” she tells him firmly, “you did everything you could, Fox. You did everything,” but it still isn’t enough. Nothing they do is ever enough. They love and love and love but nobody ever gives them even an inch. His life is not like the majority of the vod’e, spent in ships and on war-torn planets. His life is datapads and insults and being objectified his every waking moment by everyone except his vod’e and a very few Senators.

“I hate it.”

“I do too.”

“Ree?”

She hums into his neck, lips drifting to rest on his pulse.

“I love you.”

“I know,” I love you too, she says with her hands in his, with her very presence. Billy whimpers in his sleep. “I’ve got him.”

She would be a beautiful mother, if the universe ever sees fit to let him truly live. Free. Freedom for the vode, for all vode. Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr @graaaaceeliz.....more of my boys is always a possibility


End file.
